Intel Discontinuing Some Clarkdale, Lynnfield, and Sandy Bridge Desktop CPUs
by Andrew Cunningham on December 9, 2011 2:30 PM ESTIntel has announced via several Product Change Notifications that it will be discontinuing a total of 19 Clarkdale, Lynnfield, and Sandy Bridge desktop CPUs across sockets 1366, 1156, and 1155. OEMs may no longer order the chips from Intel after December 7, 2012, and boxed CPUs will only be available while supplies last.
The complete list includes the Pentium G6950, G6960, G620, G620T, and G840; the Core i3 540 and 2100T; the Core i5 650, 660, 670, 680, and 2300; and the Core i7 860, 870, 930, 950, 960, 980, and 990X. Many of these processors have been around for over two years now, and with Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge E products available at almost all conceivable price points (and with Ivy Bridge just around the corner), the discontinuation of these processors is unsurprising.
More surprising is the cutting of several Sandy Bridge Pentium models, which were released only a few months ago. However, the models in question have already been replaced by slightly faster models (the G630, G630T, and G860, with the G850 apparently still available), and high competition in this market segment from both Intel's own Sandy Bridge Celerons and AMD's offerings is bound to lead to faster turnover.
Source: CPU World
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Shadowmaster625 - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
They may as well discontinue that chip too because I cant find anything that uses it. There are sevral other ULV 17W sb chips at the $100 price point that I cant seem to find in any products. It is perplexing because you'd think these would make a good brazos competitor.Andrew.a.cunningham - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
That's a mobile chip, though, right? The discontinued processors are all desktop chips.Metaluna - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
FYI, These seem to be popular chips for people building DIY home router boxes. They're cheap and low power, and compete well against E-350 and Atom solutions. Then again "popular" in that context probably means a few thousand users, so not a big incentive for Intel to keep making them.ckryan - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Intel's not really discontinuing SB Pentiums/Celerons so much as replacing them with 100MHz speed-bumped parts. You'll won't be able to get the SB Pentium G620, but you'll be able to get the G630 for example. I'm using a SB Celeron G530 2.4Ghz for a small, out of the way, low-power and low noise system. It's fantastic for the price that I paid ($52) even if it was way above MSRP. I recommend against the Pentium/Celeron T processors like the G620T though. The regular G630 doesn't really use all of it's TDP anyway, and you're just making tasks take longer using less power than shorter with more power. If you're not super TDP constrained, there is no reason to consider a T. They're actually less efficient than their regular TDP counterparts.MrSpadge - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
The CPU itself in a T model should be more power efficient due to the lower voltage. However, at such low power consumption levels the remaining system causes a significant, constant "overhead".. which makes the system with a model T less efficient overall.MrS
Assimilator87 - Friday, December 9, 2011 - link
Why buy a new chip when you can just repurpose an Athlon XP as I have for my router? Power efficiency be damned =)Metaluna - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
Yeah it almost always makes more economic sense to use what you have (I just set up a router using an older motherboard myself). But there's just something really appealing about building a little mini-ITX box with say, an Intel S1200KP motherboard and a Pentium G630, even if it will never really pay for itself in power savings. Too bad the G630 doesn't have AES-NI.8steve8 - Saturday, December 10, 2011 - link
"December 7, 2012"so a year from now? title seems misleading...
Navier - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link
I will miss the i7 860, it has been the best bang for the buck for quite a while. It has all the bells and whistles <cough>VT-d<cough>, overclocks simply by increasing the base clock from 133 to 160 (hello 3.3GHz nice to meet you).If only Intel would not strip features out of the K series CPUs we would all be able to get along without you i7 860. May you run forever long in my system.
Einy0 - Sunday, December 11, 2011 - link
Seriously even a low end i3 based pentium or celeron flavor for a router box? A cheap single core ATOM ITX board could do that without blinking. If you really wanna make it more than needed you could throw a dual core ATOM at it. The E-350 is even more overkill and honestly a waste since the video core will go completely unused.